THE JEWISH VIEW

THE JEWISH VIEW

At a time when the Jewish menace has never been a greater threat to world peace or even human survival, a scholarly work on the cultural relations between the Jews and Arabs (or more appropriately, Judaism and Islam) is indispensable. It is most enlightening to read the Jewish viewpoint on this subject, however much we as Muslims are compelled to disagree. The author of the book under discussion,¹ Solomon David Goitein, who was for some years the chairman of the School of Oriental Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is ranked by scholars in America, as he is in Israel, among the outstanding Jewish orientalists.

At the outset, he vehemently denies the myth that the Jews were originally an Arabian tribe; he points out that in Biblical and Talmudic times, the bulk of the Bani Israil were farmers. Even the nomadic Hebrew tribes described in the Bible lived with their flocks of sheep and goats on the fringes of the desert. In contrast, the Arab beduin established themselves in the depths of the wilderness as camel breeders and merchants engaging in long-distance trade.

72 in long-distance international trade. This difference is clearly manifest in Jewish and Islamic laws and festivals. The Jewish calendar takes special note of the changes in seasons and the Talmudic law glorified the pastoral life while the Islamic calendar, being purely lunar, ignores the seasons as its festivals rotate round the year. The Shariah upholds commercial enterprise and the city life as the ideal. The Jews make provision for their harvest festival and weekly day of rest which are condemned by Islam as pagan relics.

Goitein then goes on to describe how under Muslim rule between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Jews lost their identity as an agricultural people and became totally urbanized.

Since the most enduring achievements of the Jews after the Bible and Talmud occurred under Muslim rule, the bulk of the book deals with the cultural relations between Judaism and Islam.

Moritz Steinschneider, an outstanding German-Jewish scholar, in his Introduction to the Arabic Literature of the Jews, which he wrote at the age of ninety, compared the German-Jewish with the Arab-Jewish symbiosis, regarding the two as of equal importance. Here, however, I venture to disagree with the great master. Despite their great relative importance, none of the creations of the Jewish authors writing in German or conceived under the impact of modern western civilization, has reached all parts of the Jewish people or have influenced the personal inner life of every Jew to the profound degree as did the great Jewish writers who belonged to the medieval civilization of Arab Islam. The reason for this difference is self-evident.

73 Modern western civilization, like the ancient civilization of the Greeks, is essentially at variance with the religious culture of the Jewish people.

Islam, however, is from the very flesh and bone of Judaism. It is, so to say, a recast, an enlargement of the latter, just as Arabic is so closely related to Hebrew. Therefore Judaism could draw freely and copiously from Muslim civilization and at the same time preserve its independence and integrity far more completely than it was able to do in the modern world or in the Hellenistic society of Alexandria. It is very instructive to compare the utterances of Jewish authors of the Middle Ages about Islam and the Arabs with those of the Jewish authors writing in German during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which deal with the surrounding culture. For instance, Germanism and Judaism by Herman Cohen. In Cohen’s books, Judaism is “justified” because it is regarded (rightly or wrongly) as essentially identical with the highest attainments of German thinking.

However, most of the Jewish authors of the Middle Ages who wrote in Arabic, never had the slightest doubt about the absolute superiority of Judaism. I emphasize this fact not because I believe that such an attitude should be adopted in our own times but simply as an indication that Judaism inside Islam was an autonomous culture sure of itself, despite, and possibly because of its intimate connection with its environment. Never has Judaism encountered such a close and fructuous symbiosis as that with the medieval civilization of Arab Islam. (pp. 129-130)

Even more than their Christian counterparts, Jewish orientalists feel compelled to search for the “original sources” of the teachings of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and expound their conjectures as to how

he “borrowed” Jewish and Christian practices then in vogue. Of course, Goitein bestows upon Judaism most of the credit for the achievements of the Holy Prophet!

All this leads us to the great question: which religion or which sect served Muhammad as his immediate model or, since the Koran alludes in various places to persons who instructed the Prophet,* who were these teachers? Why is it so difficult to find a solution to this problem? The main reasons are these:

The Koran contains a huge mass of material which can be traced to both Jewish and Christian sources. This is true not only of biblical and apocryphal literature with which Muhammad might have been acquainted through Jewish and Christian channels but it also holds good for elements from the Jewish liturgy and lore which had found their way into Christian circles very early.

Moses is the predominant figure in the Koran. I would not like to lay too much emphasis on the quantitative aspect although it is impressive enough; compared to Jesus who is mentioned only four times in the Koran during the Meccan, that is, the formative period of Muhammad’s career, Moses’ name occurs there more than a hundred times. Much more important is the fact that the stories about Moses are not confined to certain chapters but pervade the whole Koran and the idea of Moses, the Prophet with a Book, possessed Muhammad to such an extent that he immediately proceeded to produce a divine book of his own.

Although the general trend of Muhammad’s ascetic, pietistic religiousity with its dominant note of dread of the imminent Day of Judgment seems to be more akin to² 75 Christian monastic piety than to rabbinic Judaism, the way out of the difficulty created by this apparently contradictory evidence, seems to be the simple assumption that the group of Jews who, we may suppose influenced Muhammad’s beginnings, although they were basically ordinary Orthodox Jews, had themselves come under the influence of monastic piety and adopted some of its practices and also, some of its literature. To be sure, most, if not all of the ingredients of monastic piety which found their way into the Koran were already present in some form in early Judaism. Vigils are mentioned several times in the Book of Psalms and played a very important role in the life of the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Talmudic times, however, study at night took the place of the nightly prayer. Prostrations were a characteristic feature of Jewish worship up to the second century. Later this practice was discouraged by the rabbis precisely because it was so conspicuously preached by the monks.

The solution I venture to propose for the question concerning the identity of Muhammad’s mentors seems also to be the most plausible explanation of the undiluted and uncompromising attitude on monotheism maintained by the Prophet from the very beginning of his mission. This cannot be explained by his natural disposition or mood but could have been due only to a very strong influence by monotheists of such description—namely, Jews.

In conclusion, I wish to say this: Whether the solution I have proposed here for the problem of the origin of Islam is accepted or not, one thing is beyond doubt: the battle which Muhammad so gloriously and so easily won over his Arab compatriots had been decided many centuries before on the hills of Judea. (pp. 52-58)

Such are the views held by almost all Jewish

76 scholars today.

Being himself a Jew, it is quite natural and understandable for Goitein to follow this line, for he could not accept the premise of the Holy Quran as divine revelation without renouncing Judaism and embracing Islam. However, the student has the right to expect from a scholar of this calibre to state without any distortion the true position held by devout Muslims on this question first before expressing his own ideas. In the Holy Quran, the Jews and Christians are constantly referred to as “The people of the Scriptures” (Ahl al-Kitab) and the close affinities of the Muslims with them are repeatedly affirmed. It is also a fact that in addition to the Bible, some of the same material in the Talmud and the Midrash is found in the Holy Quran and Hadith. Thus Jewish scholars immediately jump to the conclusion that Islam is merely a distorted version of Judaism. The only convincing and conclusive answer as to the origin of Islam is that given by the Quran itself. Since all the prophets of God preached the same message and the revealed Books taught the same Truth, the similarities between the Quran and the earlier scriptures are due not from borrowing but proof of their common origin. That the Shari’ah incorporates so much of the Mosaic law is not the result of what the rabbis allegedly taught Muhammad but because Allah revealed the same legislation of the older scripture again in its final form.

Since Islam upholds transcendental values and absolute truth, the precepts revealed to Moses (peace be 77 upon him) were deemed by Almighty Allah to be just as valid when revealed to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). The mission of the Holy Prophet was not to invent a new religion but to confirm the eternal truth of the earlier revelations to the other Prophets of God. Thus did Islam affirm the ethical monotheism and much of the law practiced by Jews while vehemently rejecting Judaism’s over-emphasis on ritualism and its racist parochialism; Islam upheld the universality of the Christian message while condemning the pagan practices that had corrupted it almost from its birth.

How can we as Muslims affirm Islam as eternal and God-given truth and refute the theories of the orientalists that the Holy Prophet’s message was all borrowed second-hand from others? To those skeptics who insist that the Quran is Muhammad’s book and not Divine revelation, we may point out that every student of history knows artificial religious and philosophical systems have always failed. The Din-i-Ilahi of the Emperor Akbar, which died with its founder, is sufficient proof of that fact.

Eclectic systems dictated by expediency can never command the binding authority and universal reverence which Islam has held over the minds and hearts of so many millions for fourteen centuries.

Ever since the earliest days, the question has been raised as to whether the Quran was of divine or human 78 origin. The explicit and implicit testimony of the Quran is that the author is God Himself. It is never the Prophet who speaks in the Quran. The Scripture either refers to him in the third person or addresses him directly—O Prophet, O Messenger, We reveal to thee; We send thee, do this, recite this; such is the language of the Quran.

The direct proof of the divine origin of the Quran is manifest all through the Scripture itself. It is also shown by the peculiar phenomena which accompanied every revelation of the Quran, according to the testimony of true tradition. The Prophet’s contemporaries were objective witnesses of the visible, tangible and audible signs of the mysterious accompanying phenomena which made evident the real source of the Quran and opened the eyes of the truth-seekers. There was nothing voluntary about these phenomena, for the Prophet could neither avoid them when they came nor bring them into being when he earnestly desired to receive a message. On many occasions the Prophet sought a revelation but it was not given.

It is to the honour of Islam that the Quran records all hypotheses, reasonable or absurd, by which the contemporaries of the Prophet attempted to establish human origins for the scripture. If the origins were human, they must have come from Muhammad’s environment, from other religions in that environment or from the meditations and reasoning of the human author.

It has been suggested that the Prophet gleaned his teaching from the reading of books recording previous revelations. But the Quran categorically denies that he knew how to read or write (XXIX: 48). Furthermore, the Bible was not available in Arabic until many centuries after the Prophet’s time and the Bible in other languages was out of the reach of the common people. The few biblical ideals which may have circulated among the common people were [^80] vague and often contradictory, that they

79 cannot be the basis for the precision, extensiveness, unity and vigour in the Quran.

It has been argued that in Muhammad’s travels, he became acquainted with Arab tribes which had been converted to Christianity and got his ideas from them, but the Christianity practiced in that part of the world was so debased that it was indistinguishable from paganism. The fourth Khalif, Ali said that the tribe of Taghlib had taken from Christianity nothing but the habit of drinking wine.

Nor can it be argued that Muhammad was influenced by Jewish teaching after he came to Medina where he was in contact with Jewish scholars. Even before the Hijrah, the Holy History had been revealed in all its true details in the Meccan surahs and the Quran had condemned the believers in the Pentateuch as followers of satanic inspiration, unworthy of being accepted as teachers or examples (XVI: 63). In Medina, psychological attitudes on both sides made Jewish influence on Islamic thought practically impossible. The majority of the rabbis adopted an antagonistic position which was far from the benevolent attitude of teachers.

Those of the Israelite scholars who were impartial, enthusiastically welcomed the Prophet in Medina and declared their conversion to Islam, thereafter as disciples recognizing him as their Master. Between the two categories of the hostile and submissive Jews, there was no place for a third group of friendly tutors.

There remains the question as to whether or not he could have created the Quran by himself through the use of meditation and reason.

To a limited extent, reason could have revealed the falseness of idolatry and the senselessness of superstition but how could it know how to replace them? The Quran confirms that before the revelation, he did not know any book nor even the meaning of faith (XLII: 52). He could not possibly have guided others for 80 he did not even know how to guide himself in religious matters. He was ignorant of the legislative, moral, social and ritual details which are included in the revelation of the Quran. It was not by the study of books but only by revelation that Muhammad could know God and His attributes. Only as it was revealed to him could he define the relation between God and the visible and invisible worlds and specify the future reserved to man after death.

It is edifying to know how the Prophet himself regarded the text of the Quran. He could not by his own will retouch it in the slightest; he interpreted it exactly as any commentator would a text which was not his own. And when he postponed carrying out any of its commandments even for a short time in order to treat kindly the souls of the faithful and to forestall the objections of adversaries, we see the Revelation reproaching him severely. Those reproaches he accepted with resignation and left engraved forever in the Text.

Nothing therefore has been improvised in the Quran. Everything was foreseen and formed as a whole and in every detail from beginning to the end, including the death of the Prophet. Who could have formed and carried out such a complete plan? Who other than God from whom came this heavenly mission?*

Yet despite this irrefutable evidence which a scholar like Goitein must be well aware, he insists upon the student blindly accepting without question the assumption that all the common ground Islam shares with Judaism must be the result of deliberate imitation.

* by Mohammad Abdullah Draz, formerly Professor of Quranic Interpretation at al-Azhar University, Cairo, quoted from Islam: The Straight Path, edited by Kenneth Morgan, The Ronald Press, New York, 1968, pp. 23-29.

81 If, as we have seen, there is a very close connection between Muhammad’s creation, the Koran and the religion of Israel, there is an even more amazing affinity between the fully developed systems of the two religions. A comparison between the rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud and the classical Islam of the orthodox jurists is extremely revealing, a fact which can hardly be due to chance. All the main characteristic features of their systems are identical or almost identical.

1. Islam, like Judaism is a religion of Halakha, in Arabic, Shariah: that is a God-given law which regulates minutely all aspects of life: law, worship, ethics and social etiquette. Halakha-Shariah is the very essence and core of both religions.

2. This religious law is based on the Oral Tradition called in Arabic, Hadith and in Hebrew by words of identical meaning which authoritatively interprets and supplements the written law, in Arabic, Kitab and in Hebrew, Torah she-Bi’htav which comes from the same root-word.

3. The oral tradition falls into two parts, one legal in the widest sense of the word and the other moral. In both Muslim and Jewish literature, they assume the same form of loosely connected maxims and short anecdotes.

4. Although the Muslims had a State when they created their religious law, and although they had contact with the organized Christian churches, their Shariah, like the Jewish Halakha, was developed by a completely free and unorganized republic of scholars. Rulers in classical Islam might make decisions in regard to special cases but they never created or officially promulgated laws on their own. Nor did Islam ever have a hierarchy of religious dignitaries who decided 82 questions while sitting in official synods or councils as was the practice of the Christian churches. 5. In both Judaism and Islam, the religious law took its final shape in the form of different schools or rites which originally represented the most widely accepted decisions or usages of one country like the Jewish rites of Palestine and Babylonia or Medina or Iraq with the conception common to both religions was that these schools and rites were all equally orthodox. 6. The logical reasoning applied to the development of the religious law is largely identical in Islam and Judaism which could not but have been the result of direct connection.

5. The study of even purely legal matters is regarded in both religions as worship. The holy men of Islam as in Judaism are not priests or monks but students of the divinely-revealed law.

Thus the ulema in the Muslim community occupy the same place and perform the same functions as do the rabbis among Jews. 8. Muslim religious law developed mainly in Iraq, the chief centre of Jewish studies at that time. (pp. 69-60)

Again, the correct explanation for these similarities lies in a common origin rather than conscious, direct borrowing one from the other. Again and again throughout history it has been demonstrated how people sharing common beliefs can and do develop the same system of ideas independently. That is what happened to the adherents of both monotheistic faiths.

Proof that Islam was not dependent upon Judaism for its historical development is manifest from the differences between the two which are just

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as striking as their likenesses. The concept of Jihad or the organized struggle of the righteous against evil which is repeated with such powerful emphasis in the Quran as one of its most important teachings can nowhere be found in Jewish literature. Likewise Hijab or the strict segregation of the sexes and the seclusion of women which is such an indispensable Islamic institution was not known to the Jews.

Again, the Shariah demonstrates its superiority over Jewish law by asserting that drunkenness cannot be prevented without the prohibition of drink and by analogy, banning all intoxicants. The rabbis of the Talmud condemned drunkenness yet regarded a moderate indulgence in wine as inseparable from the good things of life. Wine also plays an important role in Jewish religious ceremonies and social functions.

Anyone who is the least acquainted with Judaism knows how important is the meticulous observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest for pious Jews which is wholly foreign to Islam. Although the Talmud has been revered by Jews as embodying a complete and infallible way of life ordained by God, nowhere in those ponderous volumes can any precedents be found for international law, the conduct of warfare and the relations between Jews and non-Jews, for the rabbis assumed that the Jews would always live as a small minority on the defensive within a non-Jewish state. Consequently, when the Jews finally did attain sovereignty in Israel, even the most pious among them did not feel accountable before

God in their dealings with the Arabs which are based on opportunism and expediency only.

By contrast the Shariah, which includes non-believers as well as believers within the jurisdiction of Divine law, offers the student very rich material on that subject.

Many pages of this work dwell at great length about the treatment of Jews under Muslim rule. Goitein readily admits that with few exceptions, the lot of the Jews under Islam was far better than their co-religionists in Europe. He correctly explains this difference in the fact that the Shariah recognizes the unchallenged right for the existence and protection of minorities belonging to other monotheistic faiths while the Church did not. He also rightly says that the sectarians tended to be the fanatical ones and not the Orthodox. He cites the cases of the Almohads and al-Hakim during the Fatimid period as examples of this fanaticism but he rightly points out that these were extraordinary incidents and that the “basic principles of Muslim law which recognized the right of existence of other monotheistic religions was as a rule, adhered to.” (p. 89) Unfortunately, the author does not regard that principle as satisfactory. He condemns the attitude of the Islamic state towards the Jews not so much because they were mistreated but because it denied to them complete civic equality with the Muslims.

In Saudi Arabia Muslim law is still in full force.

Even a few years ago when the thousands of Americans stationed in Dhahran, the great airfield in eastern Saudi Arabia, wanted to build a church for their own use, they were unable to do so for, as we know, no new churches can be erected on Muslim soil. This and similar problems are, of course, minor issues. However, a far more serious affair is the profound aim of al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, which boasts of the allegiance of the majority of the Egyptian people, to reinstate Islam as the law of the State. If the Ikhwan and their counterparts in other countries have their way, it would mean inexorably that Egypt, Syria and other Muslim countries would relapse into the position of medieval states with local Christians and Jews reduced to the status of second-class citizens. The leaders of the Military Revolution understood this issue only too well in Egypt and fought al-Ikhwan although they themselves were eager to reaffirm their devotion to the religion of Islam.

For a religious law, i.e. a law professedly made by God Himself, can never be changed in such essentials as the position of the “unbelievers”; therefore the only way to honour it under entirely changed conditions is not to use it. The fact that canonic law - the law of the Roman Catholic Church - is nowhere in force where the masses professing Catholicism are concentrated has not impaired the Catholic faith but rather strengthened its hold on the believers.

The introduction of modern civil codes in Egypt and Turkey has done no harm to Islam but rather saved it from becoming a target of justified criticism. The very idea that Egypt could give up its attainment made eighty years ago when a modern civil code was first introduced, sounds really preposterous.

This lapse into contemporary issues lends colour to the exposition of Jewish-Arab relations under Islam. As we have seen, the position of the Jews inside the Arab- 86 Muslim society was relatively better than that enjoyed by them in medieval Europe - but only relatively. In principle, they and the other non-Muslims were second-class citizens and consequently, their position was precarious and often actually dangerous. No discrimination on any grounds, religious or otherwise, can be the basis for a completely satisfactory symbiosis. (pp. 87-88)

This criticism is as petulant as it is misleading. He would delude us that persecution of minority groups is an exclusive product of medieval religious fanaticism unknown to the secular state in this “enlightened” twentieth century. Never has history witnessed more horrible persecution of minorities than in the so-called “progressive” countries today. Witness the deplorable condition of the native Indians in North and South America, the coloured immigrants in England, the black people in South Africa, the Soviet Union’s discrimination against non-Russians, the genocide of the Tibetans by the Communist Chinese and the pathetic plight of the helpless Muslims in “secular” India who are subjected to massacre almost every day by Hindu fanatics. Is it not more natural and just for the inevitable divisions among men to be based on belief and ideology rather than race or nationality? A man can change his belief but nobody can change his race. No government - whether secular or theocratic - which wants to survive, can willingly put the reigns of power into the hands of a rival group which does not subscribe to the ideology of that state. How else can a government function except through the support of those who believe in

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its tenets? Could the democratic Government of the United States of America allow a professed Communist to be elected President? Likewise, could a Communist state appoint an advocate of Capitalism as its Prime Minister? Pursuing the same logic, how then, can an Islamic state be expected to permit key posts to be filled by disloyal Jews who oppose the fundamental premises upon which that system rests? History testifies to the fact that nowhere have minorities enjoyed greater protection of their lives, property or enjoyed fuller religious and cultural autonomy than under Muslim rule.

If Goitein is not satisfied with that, it would be most instructive for him to contrast the prosperity the Jews enjoyed in Muslim lands with the misery of the Arabs in Israel today. The real test of a people and its ideology is its behaviour when it captures power. In the case of the Jews, power has transformed the persecuted into most savage of persecutors. The best documented work available on the subject, The Arabs in Israel by Sabri Jiryis, ³ a respected Christian lawyer, a native of Haifa and technically an Israeli citizen, makes dismal reading indeed. Sabri Jiryis shows us how all the most odious features of Jewish persecution in old Czarist Russia have been duplicated in Israel. In this connection, it is hardly a coincidence that most of the

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Israelis in key Government posts were born in Czarist Russia. Now the Arabs are the ghetto dwellers, restricted by military rule to their “Pale of Settlement” and so severely discriminated against that it is extremely difficult, and often impossible for the Arab youth in occupied areas to secure adequate education and employment. According to Israeli law, the Jewish immigrant automatically achieves full-fledged citizenship the moment he touches Israeli soil while the indigenous Arabs who have continuously lived there for centuries, are legally aliens! Sabri Jiryis published his book in Hebrew in 1966. Shortly afterwards it was banned. The author was then imprisoned.

It is a great tragedy that the history of the Middle East is being marred by the present impasse of Jewish-Arab relations. Zionism, the ideal of returning the Jewish people to its country of origin and to the life of a normal nation on its own soil—certainly was fundamentally sound. Zionism was created to give a new chance of life to Jews who were persecuted or in danger of being persecuted; to arrest the virus of anti-semitism in those nations where the Jews had lived and to bring prosperity and cultural vitality to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Many of these aims have been fulfilled.

Over three million threatened by persecution in various degrees, have found a new home. Certainly it was not the Jews who opened hostilities against their Arab neighbours anywhere.

(p. 211) It is no use to argue that Zionism was and still is a thoroughly humanitarian and pacifistic movement, created with the express intention—easily documented—of destroying tensions between peoples. It is vain to add that the 89 pioneers who made Zionism into a reality were a peaceful lot and therefore the discord was the fault of the Arabs who opened attack on the Jews while the latter retaliated only very reluctantly after repeated and ever more dangerous challenges.

All this is true but it does not do away with the actual situation which is a great tragedy for many on both sides of the frontier. (p. 212)

He goes on to list the antagonisms between Israel and her neighbours as follows: Israel is essentially a classless society while the Arab world was until recently feudal; the gulf between the traditional Arab and the modern Israeli; relations between the sexes and rigid etiquette observed by old-fashioned Arabs contrasted with the extreme informality of the Sabra. Who can possibly believe that these trivial things have any relevance to the issue, much less, are the real causes of the trouble? On the very first page of the book the author declares his intention to discuss cultural affairs only and scrupulously avoid controversial political questions but whereas in this case, a consideration of the political issue is indispensable, it cannot be omitted without ludicrous results. Even if he insisted on avoiding the political aspects, it nevertheless would have been most appropriate for him to discuss it from the moral viewpoint.

On what grounds do serious-minded Jews justify the dispossession of an entire people and their arbitrary deprivation of all political rights?

An analysis of this problem would be far more fruitful, but unfortunately he chooses to ignore it altogether as if it did not exist. Typical of exponents of Zionist propaganda, he

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tells us that Arab opposition to Zionism was artificially created by a few selfish and corrupt leaders and that if the common Arabs had been left alone, they would have wanted nothing more than to live with the Jews side by side in peace. But now I raise the question if any other people elsewhere in the world found themselves confronted with the same plight as the Palestinian Arabs, would they not react in the same way? Is it not only natural and inevitable for

a people—any people—to resist as much as they can, wholesale robbery on a national scale? And how can the Israelis ever feel secure living on stolen property?

A bright spot in that dark picture is the fine spirit in which the youth of Israel bore, and still bear, the brunt of the battle, is facing a most sorrowful situation. I believe it is true to say that these young men neither hate the Arabs nor dismiss them lightly. They see rather in the present deadlock unnecessary disaster which must be fought through unremittingly until peace is achieved.

If I may be allowed to conclude with a simile, Israel may be regarded as both the eldest and as the youngest brother in the family of peoples of the Middle East. It was in existence as a nation with a state and a specific religion and literature long before any of the other present-day Middle Eastern peoples made their appearance; it bequeathed to them much of its spiritual heritage. On the other hand, it reemerged only recently as a nation with a state and language of its own.

As eldest brother, it is obliged to be indulgent with the younger members of the family. This duty, I believe, it has largely fulfilled. As against the unbridled outbursts of defamation launched against it, a sober, objective and sometimes even sympathetic attitude towards the Arabs is to be found in the Hebrew press and literature.

91 However, men have not only duties; they have rights. As the eldest brother, who has paved the way and suffered for it—the oldest son is often not the happiest in the family—Israel deserves a little consideration and even reverence.

As youngest, it requires encouragement and even help—I mean, by the Arabs. This may sound preposterous taking the present situation into account but not if we look forward to one or two generations.

The great suffering of the Jewish people is not solely its own concern. Its sons have contributed immensely to the welfare of other peoples: it thus has the right that its own small home, whose creation was intended to put an end to that tragic anomaly, should be honoured and aided. Many people organized in the United Nations have indeed done so.

It remains for Israel’s neighbours to follow suit. I am convinced that they will, although this prophecy⁴ may not be fulfilled for a long time. (pp. 234-235).

How best can Jewish-Arab reconciliation be achieved? The panacea proposed by Goitein is for both peoples to become devoted disciples of modern Western civilization and re-evaluate their spiritual heritage in that light. At last when they realize how much they share in common, they will presumably live as brothers happily ever after.

In this ideal Jewish-Arab fraternity, where the Jews of course must dominate, Islam has no place.

92 To make use of the good services of a Jew or Christian and at the same time to hold him in a state of humiliation, this was the normal attitude in the medieval Muslim state and other societies of a similar character.

The law of Islam—as any other law created over a thousand years ago—never can form the base of a sound modern society.

As a matter of fact, it is not in force as the basic law of the state in any Arab country except Saudi Arabia. However, such notions contained in the Shari’ah for example, its contempt for the unbeliever and particularly, the unprotected Jew, are naturally still widely alive. That the Jews should have achieved the creation of a state or the waging of a successful war, is of course, to many Arabs a particularly revolting idea. (p. xii).

It would appear that Islamic theology has exhausted itself and that those young Muslims who take religion seriously are more or less in the same position as their Christian and Jewish contemporaries; they are beginning to find the realization of religion in social service; but the question of a new formulation of religious experience is of as great an urgency for them as for others. Thus, beyond the borders of creed and states, a new common search for the eternal truth is starting.

When and how this new search will become a social force subduing denominational and national fanaticism is still unknown.

At all events, even in the sphere of religion, Israel is less isolated than it would appear to superficial observers. (p. 229).

And how most effectively to accelerate the process of Islamic disintegration in Arab lands? Goitein’s first and foremost target is the Arabic language.

The Arabs have always been fervently attached to their language and have laid strongest emphasis on elegant and even artificially refined expression, the cult of language 93 being almost the sole content of their original civilization. The Jews, however, have always concentrated on ideas, never clung closely to their national language and paid very little attention to form and in particular to elegance and delicacy of expression. The result was that the Arabs in their almost fanatical devotion to their much-studied tongue, imposed it, almost inadvertently on most of the peoples living between the Atlantic Ocean and the mountains of Iran while Jews readily gave up their own language and frequently exchanged one language for another.

There can be no doubt that the ancient Arabs were endowed with a peculiar talent for oral expression and poetry. There can be no doubt that classical Arabic, with its extremely elaborate grammatical form and its rich vocabulary, is a unique creation. It is therefore only natural that its creators should have clung to it tenaciously, owing to the precarious life of the desert which seeks stability in tradition and fixed forms. It was not religion which caused the Koran to be read everywhere in the Arabic original. The Hebrew Bible was translated by the Jews themselves and for their own use into Aramaic, Greek, Arabic and many other tongues. It was only the devotion of the Arabs to their language which made it unthinkable for them that their Holy Book should be read in any vernacular except their own.

The Arabs have earned a most abundant reward for their staunch allegiance to their language.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the language cult, the exaggerated emphasis on outward form of expressions, had a detrimental influence on the spiritual development of all the Arabic-speaking peoples. One senses this in their literature and not only in the periods of decadence which set in very early—epigonism being essentially inherent in this formalistic and tradition-bound world.

94 formalistic and tradition-bound world. In proportion to the stupendous amount of material preserved, it strikes one as particularly poor in motifs and literary forms in the higher sense and largely devoid of genuine feeling. All the efforts of the writers in Arabic are concentrated on elegant idioms, bold comparisons, unusual metaphors and the like. Arabic poetry may be compared to an ornament which may take the form of a plant or even of an animal but does so not for the sake of representation but in order to turn it into an ingenious, arbitrary and abstract form. This remoteness of literary creation from real life, together with its rigid traditionalism, was probably one of the causes for the terrible spiritual stagnation from which the Arabs have not recovered to this day.

How different was the Hebrew literary genius! Only a small fraction of ancient Hebrew literature has been preserved but how rich it is in motifs and how close to life! There is no ostentatious display of art; the entire attention is concentrated on genuine feeling and ideas.

If we have compared Arabic literature with an ornament

we may liken Hebrew creation only to a living man himself!

However, the lack of fixed literary forms had the consequence that biblical literature found practically no imitators even in Israel itself, while the artificial verse-making of the Arabs found a tremendous following even beyond the scope of the Arabic language. The development of Hebrew poetry along Arab lines in the Middle Ages is only one example of this. In literature—as in life—it is often not the higher values but the more impressive forms which prevail. (pp. 43-45)

In Western Europe, the surrender of Latin to local languages and the rise of national vernaculars marked the transition from medieval to modern times.

The Arab countries are in a similar situation. The difference between the classical literary language and the colloquial—even 95 that spoken by the most educated persons—is immense with all the negative effects of such a dualism on literature, spiritual development in general and even on morals.

Twenty years ago it seemed that Egypt would actually do something about this grave problem and I venture to surmise that if at that time Egypt had been a really independent state with some outstanding creations—not only some pleasant collections of short stories—available in the local vernacular, we would have had today a national Egyptian language which would have done away with that linguistic dualism that is so detrimental to the Arab mind. (pp. 133-134).

In other words, Goitein is telling us that the classical Arabic of the Holy Quran cannot answer the needs of modern society and therefore local dialects should be encouraged in its place and adopted officially as the media of literary and journalistic expression throughout the Arab world. Some of the most accomplished Egyptian writers and intellectuals were won over to this view and began to support the cause of the colloquial at the expense of the classical. The Coptic writer, Salama Mussa (1887-1958), was the chief sponsor of that movement which included the support of men like Muhammad Hussain Haikal, Ahmad Amin and Ahmad Hassan al-Zayyat. If this movement is allowed to succeed, each Arab country will ultimately begin to boast of its own language.

Arabic will cease to be an international language and the ties of the Arabs with the Quran and Islamic literature will be broken as a result of which they will be stripped of their entire religious and spiritual heritage. Combined with the

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replacement of the Arabic script with the Roman alphabet, Muslims would lose their ability to read the Quran and subsequently the whole of their cultural and literary legacy would become meaningless to them.

Thus behind the impressive display of Goitein’s erudition, the Jewish conspiracy is laid bare.

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THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW

An intelligent Muslim university student in England has aptly commented on contemporary orientalism as follows:

“The majority of the Western orientalists who claim to study Islam continue to work within the old colonial or missionary framework. Thus while we have an ever increasing mass of literature about Islam coming out of the academies of Europe and America, the understanding or even tolerance of either Islam or the Muslim viewpoint shows no improvement.”⁵

Even a superficial study of Montgomery Watt’s basic work, Islam and the Integration of Society, will sufficiently bear out the truth of this statement.⁶

The title of this book appears deceptively promising as does its introduction. Since social disintegration is the most outstanding characteristic of contemporary life, Montgomery Watt declares the purpose of his work to discuss from a sociological point of view, specifically how Islamic civilization achieved this cultural integration so successfully.

Had he honestly elaborated on this theme with all its ramifications, his book could have performed an exceptionally valuable service to the intellectual leadership in Europe and America, pointing out what guidance they could derive from Islamic history on how to achieve the social, moral and cultural integration of the modern world. Unfortunately, this laudable objective has been utterly ruined from the beginning by the author’s prejudices and preconceived notions.

The lengthy first chapters commit the fatal error of attributing the historical rise of Islam and the growing power of the Holy Prophet in Medina after the Hijra primarily to economic factors. This method of approach is so thoroughly materialistic, it comes dangerously close to Marxism and is most demoralizing for the reader, especially the Muslim reader, because all the transcendental value of Islam is denied and the tremendous spiritual power and attraction it exerted is belittled.

The entire work aims to impress upon the reader that Islam is purely man-made, an historical product of its time and place and no more. It is clear that Muhammad deliberately moulded the new religion to make it more Arabian. For a time after he went to Medina, he hoped that the Jews there would accept him as a prophet and emphasized the common features of his teachings and theirs. At the end of some months, however, he realized that there was no chance of gaining Jewish recognition and (not unlike Paul turning to the Gentiles) began to introduce distinctively Arab elements, apparently in accordance with the desires of at least some of 99 the Medinian Muslims. Previously he had told his followers to face Jerusalem when they performed the worship. Now according to the traditional story, while he was conducting the worship in the prayer place of one of the Medinian clans, he received a revelation to face Mecca instead and he and all the congregation turned round and completed the worship facing Mecca. Ever since then, Mecca has been for Muslims all over the world, the qiblah or direction to be faced in worship. In this way, was dramatized the break with the Jews. There had already been Arab elements in Islam—the revelation had been an Arabic Quran, that is, a religious lecture for Arabic-speakers and the Ka’abah had been acknowledged as a house of God. Now Mecca and the Ka’abah were linked up with Abraham and at the first opportunity, Muhammad himself attempted to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca and the circumambulation of the Ka’abah, thereby Islamizing several old Arabian rites. (p. 93).

In discussing the integration of political life, Montgomery Watt interprets Jihad, as he does every other Islamic institution, in purely materialistic terms.

By the time the Islamic state had become an empire, however, it is doubtful whether the idea of the Holy war was more advantageous than disadvantageous. While it may be possible for a desert tribe to regard all its neighbours as enemies, it is not easy for a large and complex state to behave this way. In Muhammad’s closing years, it had been obligatory for every able-bodied Muslim to take part in the campaigns unless excused. Most Muslims seemed to have been content to remain liable for military service throughout their lives. They had the privilege of living as part of a ruling aristocracy.

When the expansion slowed down, however, and the fighting became harder and the 100 booty less plentiful, many were unwilling to leave the camp sites for arduous expeditions to distant frontiers… Eventually Muslim leaders are found employing mercenaries who might not even be Muslims. Thus the idea of the holy war ceased to have much real importance… Jihad is perhaps the weakest part of the conception of the Islamic community as it has been developed out of the old Arab idea of the tribe. (pp. 158-160).

Even the pure unadulterated monotheism of Islam is denied by this orientalist who seeks to impress upon his readers that it was thoroughly corrupted from the outset by polytheistic elements.

There was some difficulty to begin with over the pagan shrines other than the Ka’abah. The story of the “satanic” inspiration is the evidence for this. Muhammad, it is reported, once received what he thought to be a genuine revelation which ran as follows:

Have ye considered al-Lat and al-Uzza, And Manat, the third, the other? These are the gods to be exalted, Whose intercession is hoped for.

This delighted the pagan Meccans for they took it as an acknowledgement of the worship of their pagan shrines… Later, however, (though it is not certain how much later), Muhammad realized that the third and fourth verses were not a genuine revelation but had been suggested to him by Satan and that the true continuation of the first two was:

Have ye the male issue and He the female? In that case, it is a division unfair. They are nothing but names which ye and your fathers have given… This naturally annoyed the pagan⁷ 101 delighted by the previous version.

The point to note is that Muhammad did not at first see any incompatibility. Presumably he thought that these three deities, each of which had an important shrine in the Meccan region, were something like angels.

The whole incident is interesting and important, however, and shows that the Muslims decided only gradually which animistic practices were compatible with monotheism and which were not. One aspect of the Arab outlook made it easy for Islam to incorporate practices which had originally been animistic. A practice could be regarded as commanded by God and human beings did not seek reasons for God’s commands. Thus the sanctuary at Mecca was sacred because God had so decreed; the circumambulation of the Ka’abah was obligatory for Muslims because God had so decreed and so on with many other rituals which came to form part of the Pilgrimage. When one looks at the details of what later became established Muslim usage, one finds vestiges of animism omnipresent. (pp. 188-189).

It is important for the scholar to note that the authority the author derives these queer notions is listed in fine print in the footnote; none else than his own work, Muhammad at Mecca (pp. 101-110). Of course, it does not bother him in the least that this legend and its interpretation has never been accepted by any legitimate Muslim authority but is rather a concoction by generations of orientalists.

Like his predecessors in orientalism, Montgomery Watt is determined to prove at all costs that the Shariah is a purely man-made legal institution, thereby depriving it of all transcendental religious value.

102 The infliction of the punishment of stoning for adultery (if what is becoming standard Western interpretation of the confused material is accepted), shows how a non-Arab custom could be Islamized. The Quranic punishment for adultery is flogging; but some of the jurists also recognized stoning as a punishment in the case of married persons. The normal punishment for adultery at Medina in Muhammad’s lifetime was flogging though to begin with and in certain cases, it may have been house imprisonment.

When many persons from the Judaeo-Christian tradition became Muslims, they tended to retain the punishment of stoning to which they had been accustomed. Eventually, stories began to be circulated showing that stoning had been sanctioned and practiced by Muhammad and some of the leading Companions. (p. 192).

Montgomery Watt accepts the mischievous interpretations of Ignaz Goldziher and Joseph Schacht on the development of the Shariah as if they were the final authorities on the subject whose verdict could never be questioned.

There have been great advances in the understanding of the development of the Shariah by Western scholars during the last century. A notable step forward in the critique of Islamic tradition was made by Ignaz Goldziher towards the end of the 19th century and another step more specifically connected with the Shariah has recently been made by Joseph Schacht in his Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, (Oxford, 1950).

As a result of the work of these and many other scholars, the modern Western view of the development of the Shariah differs considerably from the orthodox Muslim view. (p. 199).

According to the theories of these orientalists, the early companions of the Prophet did not feel obliged to base the Shariah on the

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Sunnah of the Holy Prophet but rather to them the “Sunnah” meant simply the ancestral pagan tribal customs. It was not until Imam Shafi that the concept of the Shariah being based firmly and exclusively on the Traditions of the Holy Prophet was generally accepted. They allege that (God forbid) Imam Shafi and the other great jurists did not hesitate to forge spurious Hadith to this effect:

It is hardly too much to say that all the wisdom of the Middle East became incorporated into the traditions—ancient Arab wisdom, sentences from the Old and New Testaments, Neoplatonic and Gnostic doctrines and maxims from Persia and India… Much of this material was clearly inconsistent with Islam and must have worried the leaders of the main body of moderate Muslims but those who believed in one or the other part of it saw that by passing it off as coming from Muhammad, they justified their own belief in it… It is likely that the practice of forging Hadith was begun by the moderates and continued by the eccentrics. Then the moderates borrowed it from the eccentrics. It is difficult for modern westerners to realize how hard it was for the nascent Islamic culture working with different categories based on oral material to deal with a situation like that. In an oral culture, once a story has been passed around, it is remembered if it is a good one whether it is true or not and attempts to deny it are regarded as due to ulterior motives. (p. 225).

And in the fine print of the footnote, the author’s authority for this blasphemy is again none else than Goldziher’s Muhammedanische Studien.

“In fact, what the modern critics of Hadith do not realize in applying their so-called “historical method” is that they are projecting the kind of

agnostic mentality prevalent in so many academic circles today on to the mentality of a traditional Muslim scholar of Hadith. They think that for him also, the questions of religion could be treated in such a “detached” manner as to enable them to even “forge” sayings of the Prophet or to accept them into the traditional corpus without the greatest care. They do not realize that for men of the early centuries of the Hijra and especially these religious scholars, the fire of Hell was not an abstract thought but a concrete reality. They feared Allah in a way which most modern men can hardly imagine and it is psychologically unsound that with a mentality to which the alternative of Heaven or Hell is the most real thing of all, they should commit the unpardonable sin of forging prophetic sayings. Nothing is less scientific than to project the modern mentality, which is an anomaly in history, on to a period in which the verities of religion determined life itself and in which men sought first and foremost to perform the most important duty placed upon their shoulders, namely, to save their souls. The Sunnah of the Prophet and his sayings left such a profound imprint upon the first generation and those who came immediately afterwards that a forging of new sayings and therefore innovations in religious questions that already possessed precedence would have been immediately opposed by the community. It would have meant a break in the continuity of the whole religious life and pattern of Islam which is in fact,

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not discernible—proof of the falsity of the arguments presented against the authenticity of Hadith literature, arguments which attack not only the dubious and spurious sayings but the main body of Hadith according to which Islamic society has lived and modelled itself since its inception.”⁸

Tragically, such simple but irrefutable facts are not accepted by the orientalists except in the rare, exceptional more enlightened and objective Western scholars like the late Arthur Arberry. Here is Montgomery Watt’s final verdict on the Shariah:

So far, an attempt has been made to indicate some positive functions of the Shariah as an instrument for Islamic social integration but now it must also be asked whether it has any negative functions and whether it contributes in any way to the disintegration of Islamic society…. This peculiar nature of the Shariah as the mark of charisma creates difficulties at the present time when Islamic states try to frame modern constitutions on the basis of the Shariah. > > Since the Shariah was hardly a practical code even for a medieval state, it is extremely difficult to adapt it to the needs of today. (pp. 207-208).

Proof of the author’s Christian missionary inclinations is his interpretation of the Quran:

An interesting example of the strength of the dogma of “corruption” is contained in the interpretations of the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son. The event is mentioned in the Quran (XXXVII: 102-110) but the son’s name is not given. There is no reason for supposing that to begin with, anyone would suppose that the son was not Isaac.

106 In the course of time, the question became intertwined with the rivalry between the Arabs and the Persians. Isaac came to be regarded as the ancestor of the Persians as well as the Jews. Many of the early authorities quoted by al-Tabari knew that in the Old Testament, Isaac was taken for the sacrifice and al-Tabari himself, of Persian origin, prefers this view. The pro-Arab party replied that this was a place where the scriptures had been corrupted. In the end, the pro-Arab party won and it is now universally held by Muslims that the son Abraham was about to sacrifice was Ismail.

In this way, a view which honoured the Arabs and which was supported and re-supported by the dogma of “corruption” overcame the natural interpretation of the Quran in accordance with the Old Testament. It is not too much to say that the belief that the Bible was corrupt had so come to dominate the minds of Muslims⁹ that they no longer cared whether their interpretations of the Quran were in accordance with the Bible or not. (pp. 264-265).

And once again, the supreme “authority” in the fine print of the footnotes for this mischief is none else than Goldziher.

In denying all transcendental value to the spiritual message of Islam, like most other orientalists, Montgomery Watt limits the validity of this faith to a restricted time and place.

There was great audacity in the claim of a citizen of obscure Mecca that he was founding a religion parallel to Judaism and Christianity. How could a man who had only 300 followers at the battle of Badr in A.D. 624 put himself on the same level with Jesus whose followers then numbered in the millions of the Roman empire and the millions outside of it in both east and west? This would seem to be an undue exaggeration of his importance.

107 Nevertheless a case can be made out for holding that this conception of parallelism was not ideological. There was a need to be met and Islam met this need. It was fundamentally a religious need but politics was involved. It had been noted that the Arabs were suspicious of both Judaism and Christianity because of their political implications. Muhammad, it has been said, was the answer of the East to the challenge of Alexander whose conquest flooded the Middle East with a wave of Greek influence. The struggle between Greek and oriental influences had been transferred to the religious plane. Christianity, an oriental religion, had invaded Europe but there it had become amalgamated with the Greek outlook. In other words, while Christianity expressed the Old Testament tradition in a form which suited the spiritual needs and intellectual categories of most classes of the citizens of the Roman empire, nothing similar was done to provide an expression of the Judaeo-Christian tradition for the inhabitants of the Middle East. Islam was able to meet a need which Christianity had not met, the need of certain of the non-Greek-speaking peoples of the Middle East for an expression of the Abrahamic tradition in their own intellectual categories. Muhammad was not in a position to foresee all this future development of his teaching but it could be seen in his time that the Arabs were in need of an expression of the Abrahamic tradition in their own intellectual categories and without political implications. (pp. 268-269).

The moral relativity of such orientalists as Montgomery Watt insists that there is not one Islam but many. He cannot understand why the Muslims have not nationalized their religion (as Protestants did in Europe after the Reformation) so that each part of the world has an “Islam” of its own:

108 In West Africa, there has been little integration in the intellectual sphere. There has been Muslim scholarship in West Africa, sometimes of high standard in restricted fields but the deep need for conformity has ruled out any attempt by competent scholars to rethink Islam in the light of the West African situation.

There can be no attempt to adapt the Shari’ah to West African needs nor to express its essential values in a form suited to West African ideals of conduct. Similarly there can be no attempt to restate Islamic doctrine in terms of West African categories of thought. In the present phase of development, such things would make orthodox scholars feel that they had ceased to be genuine Muslims. (p. 138).

One can plainly see here how the Orientalists are working for the nationalization and secularization of Islam so that the unity of the Ummah may be destroyed forever.

Montgomery Watt flatly denies the possibility that Islam in its present form can have any appeal for the Western world.

Although Islam has produced a form of the Abrahamic tradition more suited to the intellectual categories of at least some oriental peoples than Christianity, it is a long step from that to allowing that Islam has produced a form of the Abrahamic tradition in any way suited to the intellectual categories of the peoples who constitute the great body of Christendom—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—the Greek and Latin speakers and their descendants. The attitude of Islam towards the Bible and towards the history of Christendom has made it almost wholly unaware of the problems involved in presenting Islam to Europeans. There is little sign in Islam of any move towards the integration of rival traditions comparable to the agreement between Greeks and Latins to regard their formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity as equivalent. (p. 275).

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Thus it is not surprising why the author considers the possibility of a universal triumph of the Islamic order as detrimental for the welfare of humanity.

Suppose that as a result of another world war in which all other religions were seriously weakened, Islam became the dominant religion throughout the world and that its rivals gradually faded away; could this be regarded as a satisfactory integration of world society? The answer would seem to be that this could not be satisfactory for two reasons.

One is that such a world-religion would presumably not have fully accepted and acknowledged its dependence on Christian and Jewish traditions in its origins and in its formative period and such a failure to accept one’s past is as unhealthy for a society as for an individual. The other reason is that under the supposed circumstances, those who came into Islam from traditions whose intellectual categories were rather different from the intellectual categories of the Islamic tradition would presumably have to accept without question the formulations in terms of the intellectual categories of the existing Islamic tradition. This would be a colossal loss to world society of an element of variety and richness.

In the course of time, this loss might in some measure be made good by a movement of diversification within Islam but that could not be reckoned on. (pp. 275-276).

The fact that technological Western civilization is rapidly destroying all others throughout the world at variance with it, is rigidly intolerant to any ideals and values conflicting with its own, and imposing everywhere an unprecedented drab and dull uniformity in dress, in architecture, and in almost everything else, is evidently not considered by Montgomery Watt as any “loss” at all but

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instead he frightens his readers with the purely hypothetical “menace” of Islam!

For Islam to be acceptable (particularly to the Western world) as a universal faith equally suitable for all peoples in the contemporary age, Montgomery Watt dictates to Muslims the following prescription.

The obstacles seem almost insuperable. All the distorted ideological conceptions which have been noted would require to be corrected. ISLAM WOULD HAVE TO ADMIT THE FACTS OF ITS ORIGIN—the historical influence of the Judaeo-Christian religious traditions and the cultural traditions of Syria, Iraq and Egypt.

This would lead to a revised conception of the relative importance of religious and cultural factors in the growth of Islamic civilization. It would have to be prepared to learn, even in the religious sphere, from Christians and Jews and that would be very hard. It would have to look again at the centuries in which it thought of itself as the community in whose life the history of mankind was consummated and realize that whatever the future may bring, its rule during some of those centuries was much humbler. It would have to distinguish more radically than has hitherto been done, between the essential principles of its divinely-given code of conduct and the temporary applications and work out fresh applications to novel circumstances. (p. 283).

In other words, he is telling Muslims that they must deny the very foundations of their faith if they are to preserve it!

Islam cannot “admit the facts of its origin” as Montgomery Watt understands this, without destroying its entire vital essence as Divine revelation. Such “Islam” could not continue to be Islam and Muslims would be Muslims no longer but this is precisely the objective of the orientalist conspiracy.